Electrical and mechanical properties of Sn-5wt.%Sb alloy with annealing temperature

Department of Solid State Physics, Metal Physics Lab., Physics Division, National Research Center, Dokki, Giza 12622, Egypt

Corresponding author: gouda.el73@yahoo.com

Received: 10 June 2008
Accepted: 11 September 2008
Published online: 24 October 2008

Abstract

A binary Sn-5wt.%Sb solder alloy was chosen as a potential alternative to Sn-Pb solder alloy to be subjected to many studies. It was casted from the liquid state, cold drawn into wires of 1 mm diameters. The study includes the structure, electrical resistivity, tensile strength, hardness and indentation creep behavior using XRD, four probes electrical circuit, conventional tensile testing machine, Vickers microhardness tester, respectively. These properties were carried out for the cold worked alloy and after annealing at 393 and 473 K for 60 min. It was found that annealed samples exhibit more precipitations of the intermetallic compounds SnSb, higher lattice parameters and higher crystallite size, while have lower lattice-strain induced due to the cold working process. These structural changes greatly affect the electrical resistivity and mechanical properties of this alloy.